ject. The strife raged around him, and he shut himself out from
it,--shut himself up in solitude with his own heart. Strife enough
there! Once, late at night, he stole forth and repaired to Nora's grave.
He stood there, amidst the rank grass and under the frosty starlight,
long, and in profound silence. His whole past life seemed to rise before
him; and, when he regained his lonely room, and strove to survey the
future, still he could behold only that past and that grave.

In thus declining all active care for an election, to his prospects so
important, Audley Egerton was considered to have excuse, not only in
the state of his health, but in his sense of dignity. A statesman so
eminent, of opinions so well known, of public services so incontestable,
might well be spared the personal trouble that falls upon obscurer
candidates. And besides, according to current report, and the judgment
of the Blue Committee, the return of Mr. Egerton was secure. But
though Audley himself was thus indulgently treated, Harley and the Blue
Committee took care to inflict double work upon Randal. That active
young spirit found ample materials for all its restless energies. Randal
Leslie was kept on his legs from sunrise to starlight. There does not
exist in the Three Kingdoms a constituency more fatiguing to a candidate
than that borough of Lansmere. As soon as you leave the High Street,
wherein, according to immemorial usage, the Blue canvasser is first
led, in order to put him into spirits for the toils that await him
(delectable, propitious, constitutional High Street, in which at least
two-thirds of the electors, opulent tradesmen employed at the Park,
always vote for "my lord's man," and hospitably prepare wine and cakes
in their tidy back-parlours!)--as soon as you quit this stronghold
of the party, labyrinths of lanes and defiles stretch away into the
farthest horizon; level ground is found nowhere; it is all up hill and
down hill,--now rough, craggy pavements that blister the feet, and at
the very first tread upon which all latent corns shook prophetically;
now deep, muddy ruts, into which you sink ankle-deep, oozing slush
creeping into the pores, and moistening the way for catarrh, rheum,
cough, sore throat, bronchitis, and phthisis; black sewers and drains
Acherontian, running before the thresholds, and so filling the homes
behind with effluvia, that, while one hand clasps the grimy paw of
the voter, the other instinctively guards fr